Thursday, May 10, 2012

Farmworkers are urging Mr. Alfonso Yuchengco, owner of RCBC, to
hound the president and his relatives instead, “because they are the
ones who cheated him by luring his bank into an onerous deal.By MARYA SALAMATBulatlat.com
MANILA – Last month, Eric Trinidad, 17, got injured when a policeman
used the butt of a M16 rifle to hit his legs after he and other farm
workers in Hacienda Luisita tried to block the “incursions” of the Rizal
Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) into their farm plots. At the
time, RCBC was fencing off the farmworkers’ farm plots in the renowned
hacienda in Tarlac, which was ordered by the Supreme Court to be
distributed to the tillers.

RCBC is claiming ownership of 182 hectares of the hacienda. It was
reportedly given to RCBC as debt payment of the Hacienda Luisita Inc.
(HLI), a corporation formed by the Cojuangco family to manage Hacienda
Luisita, after it postponed actual land distribution through stock
distribution since the 80s. Farmers groups led by the farmworker-based
Unyon ng Manggagawa sa Agrkultura (UMA) and its Tarlac chapter said the
HLI “gave” RCBC 182-hectares just weeks after the November 16 Hacienda
Luisita massacre in 2004.

The RCBC, said Eric Trinidad, is currently trying to fence off its
supposed land in the hacienda, in the process destroying some of the
farmworkers’ planted vegetables. With Eric, another minor was “arrested”
and jailed briefly last month when they tried to block the RCBC’s
demolition efforts. He told bulatlat.com that their elder
fellow farmers who were also taken to the police station had been jailed
for two days. Now, five are slapped with legal cases.

“Farmworkers are being charged with forcible entry, malicious
mischief, and other trumped-up charges, just because they are defending
their farm plots and crops from the demolition team hired by the RCBC,”
said Joseph Canlas, leader of the Alyansa ng Magbubukid sa Gitnang
Luzon, in a rally staged in front of an RCBC branch in Queson City this
Monday (May 7, 2012).

Eric Trinidad(Photo by Marya Salamat / bulatlat.com)

Canlas railed at the RCBC for sending “fake negotiators” to the
farmers’ groups. He also denounced the RCBC for pushing, as condition in
withdrawing the charges it had slapped on farmers, the demolition of
farmers’ huts in the contested land.

RCBC not an “innocent purchaser” but a Cojuangco-Aquino accomplice.... MORE

05/10/2012
The defense dropped a bombshell Tuesday when counsel for Chief Justice
Renato Corona, Jose “Judd” Roy told the Senate court that his client
will testify on the accusations of a $10 million bank account after his
accusers are called to the stand to testify to the truth of their
charges against the CJ.

The impeachment court granted the
defense team its request for subpoenae to be served on several of
Corona’s accusers, chief among them, Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales,
who claimed a $10 million bank account belonging to the CJ.

Roy’s
announcement appeared to have stunned the prosecution, along with some
Noynoy senator-judges, who probably didn’t think Corona would dare
testify under oath..... MORE

May 7 to May 12 - the The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal is hearing
the accusations against the United States of America for acts committed
on detainees in Iraq. The accusations are unutterably shocking and are
serious enough to merit hearing under as war crimes, and as such are
covered by jus cogens and customary international law.

The accused: U.S. President George W. Bush and his
associates namely Richard Cheney, former U.S. Vice President, Donald
Rumsfeld, former Defence Secretary, Alberto Gonzales, then Counsel to
President Bush, David Addington, then General Counsel to the
Vice-President, William Haynes II, then General Counsel to Secretary of
Defense, Jay Bybee, then Assistant Attorney General, and John Choon Yoo,
former Deputy Assistant Attorney-General.

Accusation #1:
Witness: Abbas Abid, Chief Engineer at the Science and Technology
Ministry. Detained on August 28, 2005. He claims he was illegally
abducted from his home by American and Iraqi soldiers and taken to
Al-Muthanna Brigade HQ. After saying he did not know the whereabouts of
"terrorists" in his neighbourhood, he was beaten and electrocuted..... MORE

US President Barack Obama officially endorsed same-sex marriage on
Tuesday. Also on the president’s agenda for the day was once again
flip-flopping on a major issue during an election year.

Explaining his recent change of heart to ABC’s Robin Roberts in an interview taped Tuesday afternoon, President Obama says, “at
a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is
important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples
should be able to get married.”

The commander-in-chief’s
statement marks the first time that a US president has publically
offered a stance favoring same-sex marriage while in office. It isn’t
the first time Obama has explained his thoughts on the matter, though.
In the past, however, the president took the opposing side..... MORE

A Russian jet carrying 50 passengers has disappeared from the radars
during a demonstration flight for potential buyers in the Indonesian
capital. Hijacking and a high-altitude crash into a mountain have not
been ruled out.

Due to low visibility and fog the helicopters had to stop the search
and return to base. The rescue operation is now restricted to a ground
search. The search will continue throughout the night.

“Now
we are mobilizing ground teams in coordination with the local police and
military units to find the aircraft’s whereabouts,” the Indonesian Search and Rescue Agency chief, Vice Marshal Daryatmo told the Jakarta Post.

Rescuers
have updated the plane's last-known coordinates and narrowed the search
area. In the morning, five helicopters are expected to join the rescue
operation. According to Russian diplomats, connection with the plane was
lost as it passed over the western end of Java. The search mission is
concentrating around Mount Salak, a 2,200-meter-high volcano about 50 km
from the airport. .... MORE

05/10/2012
Political campaigns have already started loud and clear — no matter
what the law provides, irrespective of the time and place of the
campaigns are staged. The unsaid truth is that it is Malacañang that is
the very first to engage in new partisan political alignments — silently
and surreptitiously. Everybody else is but following the preemptive
move it made in the eagerly awaited forthcoming combat in the political
arena. The personal and/or professional attributions of the aspirants
for political offices are irrelevant. Who you are, what you have and
what can you do — these are what really count!

In other words,
what really matter is how much money and power do the candidates have
and wield respectively, what political dynasties are behind them, and
what influence do they exercise — with or without the use of guns and
goons. The ultimate intent is to win the elections — be these
computerized or manual, be it the list of voters authentic or a big
joke. Lying during the political campaigns is a necessary practice; in
the same way that cheating in the elections is done as a matter of
course. To win the elections irrespective of the ways and means of doing
it — this is standard practice..... MORE

05/10/2012
Witnesses under the government’s Witness Protection Program (WPP) are
supposed to enjoy maximum protection from the Department of Justice
(DoJ) and the corresponding agency where the witness or witnesses are
entrusted.

Their testimonies play a crucial role in the resolution
of the cases on which they are supposed to testify. These witnesses
should at all times be protected from the dangers that those they may
implicate may get back at them.

A big part of the country’s
justice system relies on the security protection and the WPP is expected
to be extended to state witnesses.

After all, the government is spending a fortune for their testimonies to be heard in court..... MORE

Coming
in full force at yesterday’s hearing on the proposed amendments to the
“sin tax” structure, administration allies in the House of
Representatives led the approval at the committee level of a restricted
tax system for alcohol and tobacco products which critics claim would
favor imported liquor and cigarettes over local products.

Voting
46 for and 14 against with one abstention, the House committee on ways
and means approved House Bill 5727 almost instantaneously after Finance
Undersecretary Jeremias Paul introduced amendments that altered vital
provisions of the bill.

Paul’s proposal was virtually unheard of
since the ways and means panel started deliberation on the measure for
nearly six months but the pro-administration solons who trooped to
yesterday’s hearing saw no need to study, much less debate, on it, and
moved to have the measure, which for nearly a decade now has failed to
hurdle even at the committee level..... MORE

With
the Senate impeachment court summoning the accusers of Chief Justice
Renato Corona, one by one, his accusers who had earlier filed complaints
and alleged that the chief magistrate had a $10 million bank account as
well as a $3 million bank account, now all claim they don’t have any
personal knowledge of the multimillion-dollar deposits owned by Corona.

Corona has denied owning $10 million in banks, saying that the Ombudsman should explain how she got the information.

Ombudsman
Conchita Carpio Morales also denied that her office was conducting a
probe of the Chief Justice’s alleged $10 million bank accounts, claiming
that she only obtained the information from media reports..... MORE

05/10/2012
At least 17 shop clerks sleeping in a Butuan department store were
killed when a fire swept through the building before dawn yesterday,
local authorities said.

Twenty-one female employees of the store
were trapped in the fire, with seven others still missing and three
surviving by jumping from a second-story window, provincial fire
department head Chief Insp. Mario Palarca told Agence France Presse.

“Twenty-one
people were asleep on the second floor when the fire struck the ground
floor. They could not find the emergency exit because of the huge volume
of black smoke,” Palarca said by telephone..... MORE

In
what appears to be an indirect admission of the Philippine military
inferiority as compared to neighboring Asian countries, a top Palace
official said that the government can only afford to continue
documenting developments at the disputed Panatag Shoal even in the event
the standoff turns ugly.

At the regular press briefing yesterday,
presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda found himself riddled with a
barrage of questions from Palace reporters pressing him to give a
categorical statement as to how the government would react to a long
list of developments described by many as an act of bullying by China.

Pressed
for reaction for the growing number of Chinese vessels that are now
stationed at the disputed Panatag Shoal, Lacierda described media
reports as inaccurate even as he insisted that 33 Chinese vessels which
have been reported to have arrived at the contested area were just
rubber boats..... MORE

The
Office of the Ombudsman is reportedly conducting an investigation into
the alleged “payola” being funded by five big-time smugglers at the
Bureau of Customs (BoC) to finance the senatorial bid of Customs
Commissioner Rozzano Biazon in the coming 2013 local elections.

A
copy of the complaint from the OMB revealed that two female employees of
the BoC inked an unholy alliance with at least five notorious
smugglers to fund Biazon’s bid for a Senate seat under the Liberal
Party.

As this developed, Public Information and Assistance
Division chief Elenita Abanos asked the Customs police to prevent the
entry of newsmen who do not support the highly questionable policy
implemented by Biazon’s PR office, one of which was the accreditation of
fake and fly-by-night media men..... MORE

Lawmakers
yesterday ganged up on officials of the Commission on Higher Education
(Ched) and Department of Education (DepEd) for not taking action on
schools that compel students to join field trips.

Camaguin Rep.
Pedro Romualdo and Western Samar Rep. Mel Senen Sarmiento during
yesterday’s joint hearing of the House committees on higher and
technical education and basic education and culture, said their
constituents had been asking for financial assistance for their children
to join field trips imposed by the schools.

Romualdo proposed
that a resolution should be adopted to stop schools from imposing their
field trip programs, while Sarmiento, along with Aurora Rep. Juan
Edgardo “Sonny” Angara, chairman of the higher and technical education
panel asked Ched to immediately draft the guidelines for field trips..... MORE

By Charlie V. Manalo 05/10/2012
In the wake of the airport brawl between media personality Ramon Tulfo
and the group of action star Raymart Santiago at the Ninoy Aquino
International Airport Terminal 3 which the airport cameras had failed to
record, a neophyte solon yesterday filed a resolution seeking an an
inquiry in aid of legislation into the airport’s non-functioning closed
circuit television (CCTV) cameras.

In House Resolution 2382,
Southern Leyte Rep. Lucy Marie Torres-Gomez said it was rather ironic
that the airport’s CCTV cameras appeared to be non-operational,
especially during the time the scuffle between Tulfo and Santiago’s
group took place as these could have recorded video accounts of the
incident which could have helped in the investigation.

In the
absence thereof, Torres-Gomez said media had to rely on an incomplete
and inconclusive fragmentary video shots recorded through a cellular
phone, “sometimes taking sides, on the conflicting versions of the two
contending parties as to which of them provoked the scuffle and who was
to blame.”.... MORE